Skiing in Control - Free thoughts and suggestions from one of Europe's top coaches.

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Ski coaching to combat nerves is another service in short supply. How often have you been told to “ski in the fall line“?

This is not what your ski instructor meant – but it’s what she SAID!

Highly knowledgeable ski coaches refer to the “fall line”. They do this because they make fine distinctions between the ‘fall line’ and the ‘flow line’. By the ‘flow line’ they refer to the pathway taken by your centre of mass, or by your skis – “central and peripheral flows”.

However, ski instructors don’t teach many knowledgeable ski coaches; they teach recreational skiers. “Fall lines” don’t sound good to recreational skiers, so we need to provide ski coaching to help combat nerves. Read on for more explanation Continue reading →

Ski lessons for intermediate skiers are in plentiful supply, but very few seem to achieve much.

Clean, economical, skilfull skiing

Many skiers don’t care how they ski, they just want to ski about and have fun that way. But a significant number do care, and would like to be much more skilful. Why is ski teaching that achieves this so hard to find?

My personal view is that the vast majority of skiing teachers come up through systems – in all countries – that claim to teach the instructors how to teach, but don’t. They go through the motions, but the ski schools demand they do “demonstrations” and convey outdated and no longer applicable ideas of what to do.

So after giving up on ski school skiers try to develop their own skiing, but don’t have a sound basis of understanding to help them do it. Continue reading →

Ski coaching for anxious skiers has much to do with enhancing Confidence!

Ski in Control. It is your right !

How would it be, for you, if you had more of it just when you needed it?

Your level of self confidence is not dictated by outside circumstances. You are not an “empty vessel” subject only to external influences. What is more is that if you don’t have as much self confidence as you would like to have, you have it within your power to have more. If you are prepared to work at it.

Top sportsmen and women use several powerful and simple techniques, to help them maintain a high level of self confidence in the face of challenges, and set backs.

If, on occasion, your performance is less than you would have wished, (who’s isn’t?) then at least one of the possible contributory factors to that was a lack of a high level of self confidence. Continue reading →

Ski lessons to help combat nerves are in short supply. Most ski instruction is a bit too “gung-ho” for many folk particularly for women skiers, but for male ones too.

Man with umbrella problem.

As a trained observer I frequently see folk skiing in ways which make it clear their performance is being affected by (possibly unrecognised) anxiety – men or women. The main causes of this are two fold – first of all they do not have an expressly clear idea of what movements to make, and furthermore they do not have an instantly recogniseable feedback system that tells them what is actually happening. Confusion reigns.

The
picture above is a perfect example of clarity in feedback. It gives
you an instant picture of what is about to happen – you’re going to
come to some roadworks. You need to do something, like slow down.

Why
do skiers get nervous?

Above all skiers get nervous because they don’t know what is happening so they don’t know what might happen.

This
is the fault of a ski instruction system that has never done enough
to help you understand
skiing. Skiing is not a natural human behaviour, you need to learn
it. Without understanding it that is virtually impossible to learn
anything, never mind something with the potential to scare you.

So, before you do something you need to prepare for it, and before you prepare for it you need to understand it. I explain this a little more fully on page 4 of my book “Ski In Control” (link).

How to find skiing lessons for nervous skiers – That was the question that arose a month or so ago when we were filming a new Bobski.com DVD on how I teach. See the first clip on my new Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/bobskicontrolledskiing

Confidence! That’s what you need.

According to my pupils the answer was – nowhere it would seem. Some of the skiers I had with me were clearly pretty apprehensive about the process. So I asked some of them who had been effective in helping them in their search for how to overcome their fear of skiing. Nobody had. No ski schools had helped. Skiing with their partners and friends had not helped. Trying to “get the miles in” had made it worse rather than better.

This made me very sad – for a considerable number of years being out on the ski slopes had been a trial rather than a pleasure for them. I had myself been in that very situation for 8 long years until I was lucky enough to chance upon a first rate skiing coach.

This apprehension seems to apply to both men and women, though the men find it harder to admit it. Not all men and women but a surprisingly large percentage. Skiing is such a marvelous experience that it makes people continue to go every year, but the skiing itself loads a very large number of people with considerable anxiety. How sad. How curable! Not only anxiety but disappointment – returning home year after year having made no progress.

Self confidence in skiing is the hardest part of skiing. It’s much more difficult than all those issues of technique. I’ll make this the first part of a multi-part post – which is my way of saying I’m not sure what it will stretch to!

Positive feedback loops.

First of all it’s to do with controlling positive feedback loops. Here’s one describing cattle stampedes. Once a critical number of cattle start running – no specific threat is required – it sets up a panic in some others. That sets them running and the increased number raises the panic level, and it just keeps self-reinforcing. It also applies to human ones – why everyone runs for the same exit door – no one stops to observe and think.

Each of these reinforces the other, over and over again

Above all, the good news is that regarding your own skiing you can work on this topic l-o-n-g before you head for the slopes. In fact it works best when you are safe at home.

In my book I differentiate between ‘external’ and ‘internally generated’ stressors. Continue reading →

Ski In Control is the name of my new book at last published through and available from Amazon, or directly from me. Paperback £12.95 postage paid, or Kindle Edition £8.99

Tom Stiansen, World Slalom Champion says “This is a great book specially for recreational skiers. It’s a good tool for them”.

Front cover of Bob’s new booki

Ski In Control has helped the very large percentage of the hundreds of skiers I have coached to develop real confidence. They had all given up on ski schools very early on in their skiing experience because it got them nowhere.

I wrote Ski In Control specifically for recreational skiers – folk who have largely got fed up with ski schools. In it I explain why that happens. I show you why once you can “sort of” do it ski schools generally inhibit your progress. Folk then tend to blame themselves for not getting better, when in fact they are not the reason. In truth virtually everybody has the capacity to become an expert skier. That applies irrespective of your age, your gender, or your experience.

Don’t give up. There’s no need to. You genuinely have the potential.

Two folk recently wrote to me to say “If it hadn’t been for you Bob I would have given up”. There’s no need to give up or despair, read on …

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